The University of Idaho Faculty Senate passed two separate polices, both of which will implement changes to standing committees at the university, the Admissions Committee and the Committee on Promotion and Tenure.
Tuesday’s meeting, which began with an introduction of the newest faculty members for the 2021-2022 academic year, quickly shifted focus to implementing proposed committee alterations.
The first policy change to pass in Faculty Senate expanded the number of non-voting members in the Admissions Committee.
The proposal came directly from Admissions Committee members who determined that they would benefit from additional members dedicated to advisory matters, said Russell Meeuf, Faculty Senate Vice Chair.
The first additional non-voting member will be a representative from the Office of Multicultural Affairs, who will be tasked with advising other members to ensure that the admissions selection process adheres to university standards surrounding diversity and representation.
The proposal will add an additional non-voting representative from the university’s student support services. This would answer calls for a representative to be sourced from the Vandal Gateway Program, results in two total on-voting members.
Faculty Senate called for the consolidation of existing policies surrounding faculty promotion and tenure as well as the alteration of language within said policies.
The primary change within the policy will alter the current selection standards for the College Promotion and Tenure Committees. Under the previous policy, selection guidelines were limited to instructions that one representative be elected by faculty members in every department for each college.
Under the revised committee standards, faculty will select two members to be presented to the dean for selection with additional consideration given to “representational balance in the makeup of the committee,” Chair of Faculty Affairs Richard Seamon said.
“The intent here is that there are some options to make sure that we have better representation,” Provost Torrey Lawrence said, citing committees formed earlier this year that ended up with all male or all female membership.
According to Seamon, the settlement on committee members being selected with representational considerations, rather than strictly diversity considerations, came with interests of the diverse faculty members in mind.
“If it were narrowly tailored to just asking the dean to consider diversity, that would end up with certain faculty members being overburdened,” Seamon said. “The broader definition takes that into account.”
Royce McCandless can be reached at [email protected] or Twitter @roycemccandless